Mind's Eye
by Lambently
Summary: Bella is a published author with writer's block. She begins imagining a dark character for her next book who she can't get out of her thoughts. What will happen when the lines between fiction and reality are blurred? AH, rated M for mature content.
1. Prologue

**I own nothing, I just like to play!**

**This story is rated M for future mature content. Please refrain from reading if you find violence or sexual themes objectionable or if you are underage.

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Prologue

Prologue:  
1. An introductory section or scene in a literary, dramatic, or musical work.  
2. An event or action leading to another.

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He sits motionless and silent in the velvety near-black, his car hidden in the cul-de-sac's deepest shade. The street stretches away from him, extending out beneath a streetlamp's pale haze. He waits patiently. These dark nights alone are something he has grown accustomed to.

Reaching across to the passenger seat, he retrieves a thermos and decants some of its contents into his cup, savouring the coffee's distinct aroma. He brings the liquid to his lips, closing his eyes briefly as the first sip of the strong brew slips into his mouth, bathing his tongue in its intense, earthy flavour. This fading summer's night is much cooler than usual and he is grateful for the warmth as well as the taste.

He settles back into his seat, ready to continue his watch, his gaze focused on a large house cloaked by silhouetted trees a short way along the street. Only one of the lights remains on at this late hour, its glow spilling faintly onto the lawn.

It has been turned on since before the girl went inside.

He glances at his wrist as he depresses a button on his watch, luminous blue backlighting the time. She has been inside the house for over an hour now and he doesn't expect she will be in there much longer.

When the front door of the house finally opens, he quickly readies his camera, steadying the long zoom lens upon the curve of the steering wheel. He takes several photographs in rapid succession as the girl emerges, capturing quick shots as she turns back towards the doorway and wraps her arms around a man who leans out to embrace her. The man twines his fingers into the girl's long brown hair and they kiss briefly before she turns and walks briskly out onto the street.

The man watches from the porch as the girl crosses the road and approaches a small gray car. She fumbles her keys as she takes them from her purse and bends to retrieve them. She waves her free hand towards the man on the porch as she unlocks and enters the car. Starting the engine immediately, she quickly pulls out onto the street.

Once the door to the house has been closed and the girl's car is a safe distance away, he turns his own key. He pulls away from the curb and makes his way up the road, following the girl out into the shadowy web of city streets.

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**Chapter 1 will be up ASAP!**


	2. Writer's Block

**I own nothing, I just like to play!**

**This story is rated M for future mature content. Please refrain from reading if you find violence or sexual themes objectionable or if you are underage.

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**

Chapter 1 – Writer's Block

Writer's block:  
A usually temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work.

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It was shaping up to be yet another anxiety-filled day with absolutely no progress.

The afternoon sun filtered in through the large bay window, suffusing the living room with a diffuse, honeyed glow. I was still dressed in a pair of ratty old pyjamas and a fluffy bathrobe, sitting cross-legged on the couch with my laptop propped up on my knees. My word processor was open and a stark white expanse stared back – teasing me, taunting me.

I had been suffering through the worst case of writer's block of my entire life.

I had tried just about everything I could think of to shake it. I had moved out of my condo in Seattle to a small cabin about an hour east of the city, hoping that some solitude would help me concentrate. I had gotten up with the dawn to sit all day at the desk in my office. I had slept in and loafed about on the couch. I had stayed up all night in bed with a pen and a notebook. I had sat in parks and coffee shops and restaurants. I had people watched, spent afternoons in museums and galleries, gone away for the weekend. And none of it worked. What little I had managed to write was complete drivel.

My first novel, "In the Desert Shade", had been published nearly a year earlier to reasonable critical and commercial success. I was called a sensation – a fresh voice in the mystery genre and my book began to fly off the shelves. There had been a cross-country promotional tour of endless signings and interviews, and when that whirlwind was finally over I had returned to Seattle to begin working on a second novel.

And it had been several months of failure since my return.

My publisher and agent had both grown impatient with my lack of progress and I began resorting to lying to them to try to cover up how little I had actually accomplished. But I knew that I would only be able to hold them off for so long. Eventually, I would have to produce something or I would have to admit – to them and to myself – that my first novel had been a fluke.

The most common question I was always asked by readers and during interviews was where my ideas came from. Even before the writer's block set in, this was a difficult question for me to answer. I had always been a voracious reader with a fascination for language. I'd been writing stories and poetry and in journals pretty much since I was able to hold a crayon to a sheet of paper.

But my ideas for characters and plot lines had always seemed to come to me out of the blue. I could be stuck in traffic or taking a bath or sitting at a dinner table with friends and suddenly it would appear to me in a flash – a scene, a character, a setting. I would see something in complete and vivid clarity and then I would put it to paper, using my words to mold and shape the characters and story around these sparks of inspiration.

Before my writer's block began, I had spent my life constantly pulling out a notebook or a scrap of paper or even a napkin in order to scribble down my creative visions wherever they occurred to me. But my well of ideas seemed to have dried up and I was starting to worry that I would never be able to write anything again.

That thought terrified me. If I couldn't continue to be a writer, I had no idea who I would be.

The flashes hadn't disappeared entirely, however. I had just been seeing the same character over and over again. Seeing things through his eyes, at least. At first, I had thought I might be able to use him in my book, but he was just not possible to write. There was never a discernible story associated with him and I just couldn't see a plot emerging from the glimpses I'd had into this character's life.

He seemed to be a creature of habit and a keen observer of other people. Always watching, always listening, always taking in the small details. I would imagine him both scrutinizing individuals and scanning crowds – he was on constant lookout for someone, of that much I was sure. He would sit in a car on a darkened street or walk through the busy city at midday. I would see him taking photographs or following a person at a distance. Prowling, stalking, surveilling. But none of this even remotely resembled the building blocks of a novel. I could never pinpoint a motive for these behaviors and none of it seemed to fit together into any sort of larger story.

I didn't know why, but every time I had tried to write, every time I had even thought about trying to write, this character had invaded my thoughts and imagination. I had been able to think of no one else – nothing else and it had gotten me nowhere.

Settling back into the couch, I closed my eyes, blocking out the screen's harsh glare and I allowed my head to drop backward to rest against the cushion. My hands remained poised on the laptop, the keys soothingly smooth beneath my fingertips. Breathing in deeply, I tried to relax, hoping that releasing some of the tension from my body might open up a new pathway to creativity.

In. Out. In. Out.

I counted each breath, focusing on making each more smooth and controlled than the last.

Just as I could feel myself starting to unwind my phone buzzed quietly in my pocket, dragging me back into reality. I fished it out of the depths of my bathrobe and looked at the display. It was my best friend Alice Brandon and I knew that if I didn't answer she would call back incessantly. She kept accusing me of becoming a hermit.

"Hey, Alice," I answered. "What's up?"

"You must be coming around," she replied with a giggle. "You picked up on the first call this time!"

"I just didn't want to have to delete hundreds of messages from my voice mail again, little miss persistent."

I had tried to block out the whole world in order to try to concentrate the previous week by turning off my phone for several days. She was right – I had been turning into a recluse. And escaping for a few days had definitely not been worth the mountain of voice mail, texts and email I had come back to. All I'd managed to accomplish was to worry my friends and family.

"Resistance is futile!" she chirped back at me. "You know I always get my way. So… you're going to come into the city to meet me for dinner. I won't take no for an answer!"

"Alice, I'm still in my pyjamas. I'm really trying to get some work done today." I was not at all in the mood for an extended exposure to her boundless energy and optimism.

I heard a little exasperated sigh at the other end of the line. "Bella, go take a shower, put some clothes on and get your ass out of the house for a few hours. You're living like the unabomber out there, you know. Have you even written anything today?"

She knew me far too well. We had grown up together in the small town of Forks out on the Olympic Peninsula. Alice had marched up to me on our first day of school together and linked her arm with mine, declaring that we were going to be best friends. I'd known better than to argue with her right from the beginning.

"Okay, okay. You're right," I conceded. "I'll come into the city for dinner. Are you at the shop?"

Alice had opened a small boutique called the Looking Glass right out of college. She carried a carefully chosen selection of unique and eclectic fashions and accessories and even designed her own line of high end hand knits in cashmere, angora and silks.

"Always! We've been getting lots of new stock in for fall, so it's been really busy getting it all organized. But we're closing up at five-thirty today. Can you swing by and meet me?"

"I'll be there. But I'd better get going… unless you want to have dinner with me in my bathrobe."

"I saw more than enough of that thing when we were roommates. I don't want to inflict it upon the innocent residents of Seattle," she teased. "We're going to finally have to have a ritual burning one of these days!"

Ever the fashionista, Alice had always been horrified by my ultra-casual wardrobe and tendency to lounge about in sleepwear.

"No bathrobe then. See you soon," I promised before ending the call.

I powered down my laptop, admitting to myself that I was not going to manage anything productive and headed to the bathroom to shower.

Once I had made myself presentable and fed the cat, I climbed into my truck – an ancient, red beast of a vehicle I'd had since high school – and reversed down the narrow ribbon of gravel that would take me to the road that led to the interstate. The lush green of the trees quickly closed in around me, obscuring my view of the cabin almost immediately. I was grateful for the seclusion and solitude this place had afforded me, but a trip into the city was well overdue.

It was a sunny, but cool late afternoon and I drove with the windows open. I was determined to enjoy the sunshine. The summer was beginning to draw to a close, and I could feel the first hint of fall in the crispness of the air.

It wasn't very far before the large, dense expanses of forest between houses grew smaller and smaller as the suburbs began to overflow. I had missed the city – I would have to remember to come in more often rather than just running into the town of North Bend to pick up my groceries and other day to day necessities. It was much closer to the cabin, but it was hardly a metropolis.

Alice's boutique was located downtown, tucked into the Pioneer Square shopping district. I parked my truck in a public lot around the corner from her shop and walked over to meet her. The narrow frontage of the Looking Glass had only a few windows and Alice grinned and waved to me through the center pane as I approached. She had always been tiny and nimble, sometimes appearing more fey than human, but she looked almost like a child perched on a chair up in the display window as she struggled to dress a mannequin in the heavy textures of autumn.

"Let me give you a hand with that, Tinkerbell," I teased as I entered the shop and turned towards her, taking a caramel-colored woolen overcoat from her arms so she could finish buttoning the mannequin's blouse.

"I'm so glad you came, Bella!" she cried, launching herself out of the display and throwing her arms around both me and the coat. "I've missed you!"

"I've missed you too," I told her with a squeeze. "Thank you for insisting."

"I just have to get my purse from the back and we can head out. How does Italian sound? I've been craving a carb overload all day. Oh, and would you mind putting that coat up in the window for me, please?" Alice babbled as she weaved her way back through the shop's displays.

"Italian sounds delicious," I called after her. "You know I can't say no to wine and copious amounts of garlic!"

After I slipped the coat onto the mannequin, I glanced around at the shop as I waited. As always, it was full of intimidating and impossibly chic clothing. Enormous, ornate hats, glittering dresses with dangerously plunging backlines, asymmetrical jackets, jeans I was sure no woman on earth was skinny enough to fit into. Things I could just never imagine myself wearing. I had never been one to draw unnecessary attention to myself and not a single thing in stock – except perhaps the woolen coat in the window – was something I would be comfortable in.

I had just picked up one of a pair of chocolate brown suede boots with terrifyingly high heels when Alice emerged from the back.

"Aren't those gorgeous? We just got them in today," she gushed, her eyes brightening excitedly. "Oh, oh! Try them on… they'll be perfect on you!"

Alice had been trying to instill a sense of fashion in me for nearly twenty years. She would just about explode with enthusiasm anytime I displayed even the slightest interest in clothing.

"They are gorgeous," I agreed. "So soft. But do you really want to take care of me if I break an ankle? And I'm living out in a cabin, remember? Where would I even wear these?"

She looked down at my shoes with disdain. "Bella, you've got to come out of the woods eventually. And you've had those since college… you're overdue for an upgrade!"

"My Chucks are timeless!" I protested. "And they go with everything… I…"

Alice cut me off with a roll of her eyes. "Just try these on and if you don't love them I'll leave you alone. Promise. Let me go grab your size!"

I groaned in defeat and flopped down onto a nearby chaise as she scampered to the back. I gazed down at my feet. My shoes were looking a little worse for wear – especially against the plush backdrop of the shop's immaculate carpet. I slipped them off and kicked them to the side, readying myself for Alice's return.

She was practically bouncing when she emerged with the boots and hurried back to me. Before I knew what was happening, she had slid them onto my feet and was zipping them over my jeans.

"Perfect," she reassured me as she took my hand and pulled me up to stand beside her.

I was amazed at how much taller the boots made me. Alice was always several inches shorter than me, but I was towering over her. I could see straight down to the roots through the wild black spires of her hair.

"You probably shouldn't encourage your friends to get any taller when they're standing beside you," I quipped.

"But it gives me such a perfect view of your rack," she countered with an exaggerated wink.

I laughed. "Perv."

I walked slowly over to a full length mirror, surprised at how comfortable the boots actually were to wear. Turning to each side as I took in my reflection, I sighed.

"I do like them," I admitted. "Isn't it strange how a pair of shoes can make your ass look great?"

Alice grinned at me.

"But," I continued. "I have absolutely nothing to wear these with. They'd just sit in my closet."

Alice looked at me consideringly, her head tilted to one side, a slight frown tugging at her lips.

"I know!" she exclaimed, her face lighting up. She pulled the woolen overcoat back out of the front display and held it out for me to slip into.

It was a modern take on a classic style and it fit perfectly. I fastened the oversized buttons, cinched the belt and admired my silhouette in the mirror. The belted waist and the wide, rounded collar created a dramatic hourglass figure with the collar fanning out across my shoulders, warm butterscotch against the pale skin of my neck.

"It's cashmere," she whispered reverently. "And it's going to be yours."

"I don't know if…"

"No arguments. It'll be an early birthday gift. I could never sell it to someone else now that I've seen how fabulous it looks on you."

I pulled her into a tight hug. "Thank you, Alice. I love it."

"Now maybe you'll buy yourself something pretty to go underneath it. And you won't look like such a hobo on your next book tour!"

"Hobo-chic… I thought that in style last year?" I said with a smirk.

Alice just groaned. "Ready for some dinner?"

I changed back into my shoes and we locked up the shop. Before heading to the restaurant, we stopped at my truck to drop off the coat and boots. We had a favourite restaurant in the neighborhood – a small Italian place just two blocks away from the shop.

It was busy, but not overly crowded and we were able to get a table immediately. As the hostess led us through the maze of tables, I heard my name called out through the noise.

"Bella?"

I turned, scanning the nearby tables until I found a familiar face.

"Laurent!" I yelled over the din as I made my way towards him. "It's been too long… I've been meaning to call."

Laurent had been my favorite professor at college and had remained a supportive mentor after I'd graduated, particularly while I was working on my novel. He'd always been willing to read over drafts and talk through ideas and problems. More importantly, he had always believed in me as a writer – even when I had still been his student. I would never have gotten through writing my first book without him.

"Bella, I believe you already know Irina," Laurent said in introduction as he took his wife's hand across the table.

Laurent and Irina made a stunning couple, both in their late thirties with sleek, black hair, elegant, angular features and fair, olive-toned skin. I had met her a few times at faculty events and occasionally when she'd dropped in to visit Laurent in his office.

"Of course, it's good to see you again," I told her with a smile. "And this is my friend Alice. She actually took freshman creative writing along with me as an elective."

"Ah, yes. The girl who was determined to write solely about what her characters were wearing," Laurent teased. "How could I forget?"

"Maybe I was trying my hand at imagery!" Alice protested. "Or symbolism! Personification?"

We all burst into laughter.

"It's nice to meet you, Alice. I remember hearing about you!" Irina extracted her hand from Laurent's grasp and extended it to Alice.

"Don't worry," I reassured them. "She owns her own boutique now, so any writing she does these days about clothing is appropriate."

"Speaking of writing, Bella… how's the second book coming along?"

I had known Laurent would ask, but the question still twisted a knot deep within. I sighed.

"To be honest, I'm having some trouble getting inspired this time around. I'd have gotten in touch a lot sooner if I'd had anything I was really ready to show you."

"Give me a call and come by for a coffee sometime to catch up, okay? You don't need to bring any writing, just yourself."

"I will," I promised. "Now we'd better run… the hostess looks like she's losing her patience."

"Enjoy your dinner, girls," Irina called after us as we made our way over to be seated at a small table at the back of the restaurant.

The food was delicious – Caesar salad, garlic bread, veggie lasagne and a shared carafe of pinot grigio. And as always, Alice's company was excellent. It had been far too long since we'd just sat down spent some time together. The book, or lack of a book, had been such a preoccupation.

But before I knew it, dinner was over and I was back in my truck after promising Alice I would "emerge from the wilderness" more often. With my new coat folded neatly on the seat beside me I drove out of the city, the evening sun setting at my back. As twilight fell, the clusters of houses gave way and the forests began to press in as deep, blackening tangles at the roadside.

I was just exiting the interstate when my creative energy took over in a sudden burst. The images were dark, terrible and haunting – and so intense that I had to pull my truck to the side of the road and squeeze my eyes closed.

This was exactly what I had been waiting for. For the first time in months, I had something to write about.

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**This is my first fanfic – hope you've enjoyed reading so far! Any comments, questions, suggestions, etc. would be appreciated.**

**I have long-term plans for this story and should be updating twice a week, so hopefully you'll be back to read more when the next chapter is up!**


	3. Prose

**I own nothing, I just like to play!**

**This story is rated M for mature content. Please refrain from reading if you find violence or sexual themes objectionable or if you are underage.

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**

Chapter 2 – Prose

Prose:  
The ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse.

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Rage twists within as he pursues the girl through the darkened forest. Blood seethes through his veins, his pulse stirred to urgency by the chase and by his anticipation. This one has given him more trouble than he had expected she would. She should be dead by now.

The evening shade is advancing, blanketing the trees in inky blues and greens. The air is cool and damp and a wispy mist tendrils through the undergrowth, further obscuring the details. The moon has not yet risen and before long they will be completely shrouded in the dark, in the absolute black of coal.

The girl trips on something unseen and lurches forward, tumbling into a messy swatch of fronds and branches. She tears her bare skin on the brush as she scrambles to her feet, but she resumes running, not daring to look back to gauge her distance from her assailant. Her fear arouses a frisson of excitement in him – the desperation is palpable.

She will fight him through her last breath, but her death is inevitable. She will not leave these woods alive tonight.

He bears down upon the girl when she stumbles again, grunting as he knocks her from behind into the lush greenery. She screams out, a long, chilling howl that he stifles by burying her face in a spongy pillow of moss. He is not concerned with the noise she makes – there is no chance they will be overheard in this desolate place. Instead, he forces her head to the ground to degrade, to dominate, to further escalate her panic.

She struggles wildly, her body thrashing beneath his, but his gloved hands work quickly, weathered leather against supple skin. She swings around and tries to bite him, but he manages to bind her this time. The plastic strapping will hold her hands behind her back and keep her legs together. He's already had them spread apart to his satisfaction tonight.

Forcing her onto her back with her arms pinned underneath her, he holds her down flat with his own weight. Her breathing shallows as he draws a blade from a sheath on his belt and presses it to her throat, razor-fine steel against her fresh skin, fragile as paper. But she cannot still herself completely and blood beads along the edge with each inhalation.

"Please," the girl rasps in a whisper, her eyes wide and pleading, shedding rivulets that carve clean and pale across her soiled cheeks.

The word does not move him, but he retracts the knife from her skin. He is no longer in the mood to play with her. With a swift movement, he plunges his weapon deeply into her torso. The ease with which a blade slides into a human body surprises and delights him every time. He watches with satisfaction as the wound begins to seep.

Over and over again he thrusts into her in a frenzy, angling up towards her chest cavity, slipping between her ribs, seeking out her most vital places. Her breathing becomes gurgling and frantic – a fish torn from the sea. With one final, decisive motion he tears his knife across her throat, snuffing out the last ember of her fleeting vitality in an instant.

As she exhales for the last time with a shudder, he can feel the thud of her heartbeat slow and come to a terminal halt beneath him. Blackness, thick and smooth as oil, pools and creeps through her hair, the matted blonde colored blue-gray by the night. Her eyes glow an unseeing glassy sheen in the first sliver of moonlight.

Reaching forward, he takes the earring from her right earlobe, ripping the dainty silver flower from her dead flesh. He briefly touches his lips to hers before resting his face against her breast. He inhales deeply, breathing in the girl's own fragrance mixed with forest's competing scents of growth and decay. And finally, the relief washes through him, a desperate kind of delicious, like a glass of cold water when you've been lost in the desert.

He closes his eyes. He will remain here with her like this until her warmth fades.

Silence. Darkness. Peace.

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Jamming the truck into gear, I slid violently on the gravel as I accelerated down the road. I had to get home as quickly as possible. I had to start to put this into words. It wasn't a story yet, but it was a kernel that I could coax and cultivate. It was a beginning.

As I raced along, the isolated road ahead illuminated only by my headlights, the horror of what had just taken place in my head began to weigh upon me heavily. I had written about death before. A killing in the Arizona desert had been the centerpiece of my first novel. But this felt closer to home somehow – perhaps only because of the familiar setting. The woods of my imagining had not been unlike those that loomed at the murky boundary of the truck's lights.

I felt momentary relief pour through me when I pulled up the driveway and the cabin came into view. The porch light I had left on before driving into the city was a welcoming beacon in the encroaching darkness. My relief did not last long, however. For the first time since I had moved out of the city, the remoteness of the place frightened me.

A brief session of internal chiding spurred me forward. I refused to allow my own imagination to take over and paralyze me with fear. I shifted the truck into park, killed the engine, threw the cab door open and swung down onto the gravel in a single, fluid motion. Slamming the door closed behind me, I crossed the expanse of lawn at a sprint and jammed my key into the lock as soon as I reached the porch. When I was safely inside with the door firmly secured behind me, I leaned back against it, my heart thudding loudly in my chest. And then I began to laugh, suddenly feeling very foolish for letting my nerves get the better of me.

A flash of motion across the living room startled me again momentarily, but I quickly realized it was just my cat, eager to welcome me home and beg for a second dinner.

"Hi, Jakey," I cooed in greeting, bending to scratch behind his ears as he purred and butted his shaggy little head against my ankle.

After giving in and feeding Jake an evening snack in the kitchen, I grabbed an unused notebook and pen from my office and curled up into a large armchair in the living room. I pulled my knees up towards my chest, using them as a desk upon which to balance my notebook. It came to me slowly at first as I scribbled down little flashes of detail and things I did not want to forget. But my writing quickly turned to a feverish scrawl and my creativity uncorked, the words beginning to flow.

Drawing on the silent energy of the night, I wrote and wrote, pausing only occasionally when I would get up to change positions or get a glass of water. I switched over to my laptop at some point after midnight. I always preferred to jot down ideas and fragments on paper, but full sentences and paragraphs were more easily managed and reviewed digitally.

By the first hint of morning, I had worked out the beginnings of a framework for the plot, sketched some characters and settings and written a basic draft of a few scenes. The living room was a mess of loose sheets of paper I had torn from the notebook and stray sticky notes. There were a lot of details I still needed to work through and I wasn't quite sure how the story was going to resolve itself, but it was a place to start from. I had always been the sort of writer who stitched things together in little bits and pieces as inspiration struck.

I was exhausted and hungry, but I was happier than I had been in a long while. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been so productive.

I got up and stretched, leaving the disarray of my work area behind while I went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. While I waited for it to boil, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and fed Jake some breakfast. I made myself a big mug of peppermint tea when the water was ready and slipped on a hoodie and shoes before heading outside to the porch.

This was my favorite place to eat breakfast – I rarely ate in the kitchen anymore. I could sit out here to get some fresh air even when we were being inundated with typical northwestern drizzle. The porch was small, but featured a double seater swing suspended from a heavy wooden frame. I settled onto a cushion and ate quickly as the swing swayed gently beneath me. The sky paled from indigo as I sipped my tea and before long I could start to make out individual branches and leaves in the still darkened forest. Having the wilderness so close by was always a comfort and I was relieved that my anxiety from the previous night had not lingered. I had grown up at the forest's edge in my hometown of Forks, right at the boundary between civilization and the ancient green unknown, so I had learned not to fear the woods at a young age.

Movement at the edge of the trees caught my attention as a doe and her fawn entered the clearing off to the side of the cabin. Mother and child never strayed far from one another as they grazed their way across the lawn together. I watched them feed, chewing at the grasses and small plants, until they disappeared once again amongst the foliage. By the time I had finished my tea, the sky had turned to muddled lavender and was warming to a crown of amber along the tree line as the sun continued to rise. I gathered my dishes and headed back inside.

Once I had put my dishes in the kitchen sink to deal with later, I changed out of my jeans and headed straight to bed. As much as I wanted to get right back to writing, I desperately needed some sleep.

I woke up some time later when my phone rang. I fumbled around blindly on the nightstand to find it. "Hello?" I answered in a mumble, my eyes still too bleary to read the display.

"Bella, this is Victoria… did I wake you?"

I stifled a groan. Victoria was my agent and I had been avoiding her as much as possible. As far as she knew, my new book was already more than halfway to finished. I had promised her an initial draft would be complete before the end of October.

"Maybe," I admitted, a little embarrassed knowing that it must have been getting close to the afternoon. "I was up all night writing so I needed a bit of sleep. I got on a really good roll and just couldn't stop."

"Oh, well I'm sorry to wake you then. I just wanted to make sure we're still on for lunch tomorrow. We have a few things to talk about."

"Of course. Noon, right?"

"That'll work. If you meet me here at the office, we could go over to that little Greek place around the corner."

"Okay," I replied as I tried to stifle a yawn.

"Bella?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you doing alright?"

"Yeah. Don't worry, the book's really starting to come along now."

"Sweetie, I wasn't asking you about the book."

I smiled. It was too easy to think of Victoria as someone who was just after me to produce the next bestseller. It was good to be reminded that she wasn't only in this for the commission.

"I'm okay," I reassured her. "Better and better all the time."

"Good. Get some rest tonight, okay? We'll talk tomorrow."

"I will," I promised before disconnecting.

Since I was going to be headed into the city anyway, I called Laurent and arranged to meet him for coffee the next morning as well. Now that I was writing again, I was eager to bounce some of my ideas off him and just to catch up. He had grown into a friend as well as a mentor since I'd left college and I had been avoiding talking to him along with so many other people.

I fired off a quick text to Alice too, asking her to help me shop for a few additions to my wardrobe in the afternoon. Her generous gift of the coat and boots the previous day had made me think about clothing for the first time in months. She was right as always – it was about time I stopped dressing like I was in still in high school.

Her reply was almost instantaneous.

**if ur jk ur ded**

I grinned. Only Alice would take an invitation for a little shopping so seriously. We made arrangements to meet up after my lunch with Victoria. I think Alice had been not so patiently waiting for this moment since the day we'd met.

After a quick shower, I got straight back to work, not wanting to lose any momentum. The words came to me more slowly by daylight – the initial rush of creativity had subsided and only the more difficult parts of the process remained. My main character was tricky. My initial thoughts about him were that he would somehow be a protagonist despite his penchant for skulking and stalking. But he couldn't even be an antihero if he was out playing Jack the Ripper in the dark. I wouldn't have imagined such depravity or rage in this character before the previous night's revelation.

But I didn't have anyone else's eyes to tell this story from. I was going to have to either switch to the third person or write my book from the perspective of a vicious killer. And how would I possibly convince people to want to read a mystery novel without being able to root for someone? Changing to the third person was the only way I could see going forward. I'd have to introduce a protagonist and use the external point of view to toggle back and forth between this hero and the killer. I would have to create a cat and mouse game in which they would both be the hunter and the hunted.

The rest of the day was spent holed up in the living room plugging away at assembling the structure of the story and trying to create a character who could act as my protagonist. I decided on a female lead, a young and inexperienced small town police officer, but I was having trouble breathing any life into her. She had to be bold and aggressive enough to tackle this killer and I knew I would have a hard time making her soft enough to be likable. I always had problems with characters I had to invent without the benefit of seeing through one of my flares of inspiration first.

I was becoming frustrated and I had to keep reminding myself that the process of writing had always been stop and go for me. I could be flying high as the words streamed forth, absolutely confident that I was headed in the right direction in one moment and then utterly convinced that my writing was full of problems I'd never resolve in the next. It was very easy to wallow in the lows and I knew that I would never get this book finished if I didn't find a way to push through them.

By mid-evening, my lack of sleep the night before had caught up with me and I decided that I had accomplished all that I could for the day. I brushed my teeth, washed my face and changed into my pyjamas before crawling into bed, ready for a good night's sleep. I snuggled in between the sheets, curling up on my side. But just as I started to relax and was about to doze off, my imagination took over and I saw through my villain's eyes once again.

* * *

He cradles the earring carefully in his leather clad palm, its intricate petals frozen in delicate, gleaming silver. Opening a wooden cupboard, he extracts a box with a matte green finish and lifts the lid. Inside, individual compartments separate the pieces from one another. He drops the earring into a vacant chamber, creating a tiny dull thud as metal strikes plastic.

For a brief moment, he wishes he had also taken the earring's mate.

As he glances fondly over the box's other contents, a few favorites catch his eye. A solitaire engagement ring, a golden cross on a coiled chain, a heart shaped ruby brooch, a tarnished silver cuff bracelet. Each piece of jewellery is an irreplaceable reminder of a moment that can never be recaptured.

He closes the box, returns it to the cupboard and closes the door on his treasures.

* * *

**Oookay, apologies for the extreme delay in posting this second chapter. After putting up the prologue and Chapter 1 I made some serious adjustments to a few things that will happen later in the story and ended up having to do some rehashing of my outline. Things are back on track now though and I aim to be updating 1-2 times per week from here on out.**

**Thanks for reading! Please review or drop me a message if you have any comments, questions, etc. I'd love to hear any feedback on how you've enjoyed the story so far!**


	4. Exposition

**I own nothing, I just like to play!**

**This story is rated M for mature content. Please refrain from reading if you find violence or sexual themes objectionable or if you are underage.

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**

Chapter 3 – Exposition

Exposition:  
Dialogue, description, etc., that gives the audience or reader the background of the characters and the present situation.

* * *

When I woke up to the piercing beeps of my alarm clock the next morning, I could only vaguely remember what I had been thinking of just before I had fallen asleep. I rolled over and picked up my notepad off the nightstand. I always kept writing materials in the drawer beside my bed in case of late or middle of the night inspiration. Luckily, my notes were clear and reading them brought back the mental image of the box of jewellery to me in complete clarity. A cache of stolen mementos all lined up, ordered and compartmentalized.

I shuddered, an involuntary response to the combination of the morning chill and the thought of this character killing so many women, fictional as they might be. His was a much more difficult head to imagine being inside now that I had seen his violence in action.

Hearing that I was awake, Jake trotted into the room and jumped up onto the bed to greet me. He padded towards me across the sheets, let out a high pitched mewl and perched himself on my pillow, wrapping his body around my head. He poked at my cheek with his paw and licked his tiny, rough tongue across my forehead before starting to purr, loud and deep.

"I know you only love me for my Tender Vittles," I accused, scooping him up off the bed with me and carrying him under one arm to the kitchen to feed him his breakfast.

I ate my own bowl of food, showered and got dressed quickly. It would take me an hour to make the drive to Laurent's office on the university campus, perhaps even longer with the typically heavy morning traffic in the city. His schedule was still fairly open because classes for the fall semester hadn't commenced yet, but I didn't want to be late meeting him.

On my way into Seattle, I made a brief stop in North Bend to check my post office box. I had started having my fan mail delivered here when I had moved out to the cabin. When my book had first become popular, I started receiving overwhelming numbers of letters from readers, but the volume had gradually tapered to a more manageable flow as the media blitz subsided. I still opened and at least skimmed all of the letters myself, but very early on I had realized that I would have to resort to having form replies sent out as responses. I at least signed them myself and I still wrote the occasional personal reply when a letter was in some way extraordinary, but I just didn't have enough hours in the day to do that for all of them.

It had still felt very strange to me that there were so many people, so many strangers, who felt compelled enough by my writing to send me a letter full of thoughts they wanted me, or their idea of me, to know. I didn't think I would ever get used to all of the attention – I had expected the life of a author would be more anonymous.

One of my best friends from college, Angela Cheney, handled all of the mail for me after I had poked through it myself. She addressed and mailed all of the autographed form responses and also managed my personal website, making sure it was up to date with any upcoming appearances and moderating the message board. It was a perfect setup. I had someone I had known for years taking care of these things for me and she had some part-time employment that she could do from home while she cared for twin sons that had been born earlier in the year.

I hadn't been to the post office in about a week and a half and I was surprised at how much mail had accumulated since my last visit. My box was completely stuffed with envelopes and a couple of small parcels. It was always slightly terrifying to open the packages. Someone had once sent me a small doll that had been elaborately made up with custom, handmade clothing and gory, painted-on wounds to replicate the murder victim in my first novel. That story had taken place in the desert and a handful of sand had even been thrown into the package with the doll to complete the effect.

It doesn't get much creepier than that.

I transferred my mail to a large plastic bag I had brought with me, relocked the post office box and headed back out to my truck to finish the drive into the city. The traffic wasn't as bad as I'd feared, but it was after ten by the time I made it into central Seattle so most people had already completed their morning commutes. At the university, I paid an attendant and parked my truck in a visitor's lot.

As I walked to meet Laurent, I made a point of walking past the Suzzallo Library, my absolute favorite building on campus. Its gothic architecture was impressive from the exterior, all sculptures, arches and buttresses, but inside it was absolutely magical. Up a wide marble staircase was the reading room, a long, cathedral-like space with a vaulted ceiling, leaded and stained glass windows, luminous chandeliers and sturdy oak furniture. I had always felt smarter just walking through its doors. It was a sanctuary to me during my college years and I had spent countless hours sitting at one of its desks to study, write and occasionally daydream that I was a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry rather than the University of Washington. I had even written some portions of my first book in there, scenes I had dreamed up while I was still a student.

Laurent's office, in comparison, was small and cluttered with teetering stacks of books and loose sheets of paper. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, he was also a well-known writer who had published several volumes of poetry and made regular contributions to literary journals. His floor to ceiling shelves were completely stuffed with every type of publication imaginable – thick scholarly tomes, dissertations, novels, magazines.

He looked up from his work and smiled as I walked through the doorway. "I was just thinking it that it would be a perfect time for a coffee break."

We headed to a nearby kiosk to pick up some beverages and then sat down together on a bench outside of his building.

"Before we talk shop, I've been meaning to ask you for a favor," Laurent said, waiting for an indication that I would probably agree to whatever he was about to ask.

"Of course… anything," I replied. "I'd have to do it even if we weren't friends. I mean, god, I owe my entire career to you."

"You don't owe me anything, Bella. Your book has done so well because you're a gifted writer. But I would really appreciate it if you'd consider coming in to give a talk to my freshman creative writing course in September about your experiences as an author. I think the students would get a lot out of it and it might be a good experience for you too."

"Really? I would love to speak to your students! I'd be so honored to do it."

"Well, great. We can talk some more about the details later on, but why don't we stop back at my office before you leave so we can choose a date that works for you?"

"Sounds good," I agreed. "I'm really looking forward to it."

Laurent turned towards me on the bench. "Thank you, Bella. Now, tell me, how is that book of yours coming along?"

We spoke at length about my various plans and the problems I was having with my writing. I knew that I was the only one who could ultimately resolve my difficulties, but Laurent was an excellent sounding board for my ideas. He mostly listened, but he also asked some good questions that opened up new avenues of thought for me. Mostly I was just happy to have someone to talk to about my work that I felt comfortable with. I had always been an extremely self-conscious writer, afraid to show my words to anyone else unless I felt they were perfect.

His final advice to me was something I knew already, but always needed reminded of. He encouraged me just to write, to get whatever was in my head out and down on paper and to worry about the editing and seaming together of things later on. It was always better to write things down, even if it was material that would never be used or would need a major overhaul.

When we had finished talking, we returned to Laurent's office and set up a date for me to speak to his class in the middle of September. After I had promised him that I would keep in touch more regularly, I walked back across campus to my truck. From the university, it was just a short drive to Victoria's downtown office. But before I could leave the parking lot, a new insight into my story suddenly popped into my head.

* * *

He weaves his way through the night-dampened ferns along the river's edge, as quickly as he can manage with a body in tow. The sun has not yet risen, but the sky is beginning to lighten and he dares not linger in the place he has chosen for her. She will be easily discovered here and he must be long gone when this occurs.

He wants her to be found.

Laying her down in the pebbled shallows between the shore and a small, grassy patch of island, he rolls her free of the blue plastic sheath he had encased her in. He was careful to free her limbs of their bindings before she stiffened and now she splays out just as he had envisioned. Palms upturned, arms outstretched, hair fanning out like a halo. She is an angel offering herself to the heavens. The water rushes around her and then over her, tickling slowly across unfeeling flesh.

He retreats as the river begins to wash her clean. He allows himself to turn to admire his masterpiece only once before he fades back into the dark wall of trees and heads out towards the road.

* * *

I searched and found a pen in my purse, but had no luck in finding any paper. There wasn't even a random grocery receipt in there that I could write on. I looked around the truck, desperate for something to save me from having to take notes about a corpse on the palm of my hand. I felt relieved when I remembered my bag of fan mail sitting on the other end of the bench seat.

Fishing my hand into the bag, I pulled out a single letter. The front was covered in stamps and ink, but the reverse was beautifully blank. I jotted down a few phrases describing key features of the events that had just taken place in my mind. I was struck by a strong feeling of familiarity with the setting again. Déjà vu. This time, I felt like I had been to that very spot before, but I couldn't say where or when.

I pushed the thought out of my mind for the moment. I had a lunch meeting to get to and Victoria was definitely not someone who liked to be kept waiting.

I arrived at her literary agency a few minutes before noon. It was a small and plain office, with only a few agents who represented authors writing both fiction and non-fiction in the Pacific Northwest. They specialized in promoting new and upcoming local writers to the remote, corporate publishing giants in New York City. When my book had become such a success, some people had encouraged me to seek out a new agency with a well recognized name and more contacts in the industry. But I trusted Victoria. She and Laurent were old friends and he had recommended her to me when I was ready to try to sell my first novel. I would always be grateful to both of them for believing in me and helping to achieve my first printed words.

I waved to Riley, the agency's receptionist as I entered. He was on the telephone, but he waved me over towards Victoria's office. She emerged before I could take another step though, bursting towards me in her characteristic rush.

"Bella, it is so good to see you!" she gushed as she came across the lobby to me and pulled me into a brief hug. "Did you manage to catch up on some sleep last night?"

"I am much better rested today, thank you. How are things with you?"

"Oh, crazy as always! Let's walk while we talk," she said as she steered me back out of the building by my elbow. "So the writing is going well?"

"I'm definitely making progress."

It wasn't technically a lie, but I felt a twinge of guilt for purposely misleading her.

I stepped up my pace to keep up with her. Victoria was tall and leggy with a mane of flame colored hair that blazed down her back in carefully constructed disarray. A modern day Amazon, she practically oozed confidence and tenacity as she stalked along the cement.

"Are you sure you don't want me to read through any of it yet? Marcus is really starting to get impatient to see something concrete, you know. He's been badgering me by phone and email because he hasn't heard anything from you in weeks."

Marcus worked for my publisher in New York. I had signed a contract granting them rights to up to three upcoming novels based on the success of my debut.

"I'm sorry he's been pestering you… I will give him a call later today. I realize I've been sort of sequestering myself, but I know he's not going to like what I have to say. I'm not ready to show this to anyone yet, but I am going to get through it eventually. I just need some more time."

"Fair enough. Just call and keep him updated, okay? Now, there's someone in here I want you to meet," Victoria told me as we walked into the restaurant. She gestured ahead at a table across the room where a man was rising from his seat at an otherwise empty table to greet us.

He was absolutely gorgeous – tall and lean with a shock of golden curls and a flirtatious smile that dazzled.

"Bella Swan, this is Jasper Whitlock. Jasper… Bella." I extended my hand to him as we were introduced and he took it in his, shaking gently.

"Miss Swan, it is a great pleasure to meet you. I loved your book," he said, his voice saturated with the sweet, lilting slowness of the south.

"Thank you very much," I replied, retracting my hand as I sat down at the table. "But please, just call me Bella."

A waitress came to take our lunch orders immediately, so our conversation was delayed until she had retreated.

"The reason I wanted to introduce you to Jasper today is that he has just accepted a position with our agency. He is coming to us after working for an old friend of mine in New York as an assistant for the last couple of years."

"Well, it's lovely to meet you too, Jasper. I hope you're enjoying Seattle so far. What made you decide to move here from the big city?"

He looked like he was considering how to answer my question for a moment before responding. "I've never really been much of a city boy, to tell you the truth. I grew up on a ranch in Texas so even after a few years, New York could still be overwhelming. Here, at least a guy can get out and experience a bit of nature on the weekends. And how could I pass up the opportunity to represent the famous Isabella Swan?"

I couldn't help but smile. Jasper Whitlock was charming and he knew it.

"We've been looking at ways to grow the agency for a while now and we're getting ready to put some of our plans for expansion into action," Victoria explained. "Jasper has already started shadowing me here, learning about the business and all of my clients. You're going to be seeing a lot more of him from here on out."

The meeting had taken on a more serious tone. It was starting to sound like Victoria was either leaving the agency entirely or was at least shuffling their client load around significantly. Confusion must have registered on my face because Victoria was quick to clarify the situation.

"Bella, don't worry. I am still going to be your agent. But we're going to be opening a small satellite office in New York by the end of the year and James and I are going to be relocating there temporarily while we get things off the ground."

James was Victoria's husband, a lawyer who handled all of the agency's legal needs. He was as aggressive in business as his wife and together they made a formidable negotiating team.

"You'll be seeing Jasper's face more than mine, but I'm still going to be working as hard for you as I do now."

"I'd be lying if I said this doesn't concern me a little," I admitted. "I've gotten used to being able to come by your office whenever we needed to talk."

At this point, Jasper was keen to interject. "And that's what I'll be here for, Bella. I know we've just met, but I will be as committed to you as a client as Victoria has been. My door will be open to you anytime."

There was something very reassuring about him. Damn that southern drawl.

Our lunch arrived at the table and we talked more about the agency's expansion plans while we ate. Jasper was also eager to ask me about my writing. He had some interesting questions about my first book and my writing process. By the time I had finished my moussaka, he had started to feel like a friend and I was feeling a lot more comfortable with the idea of having to interact with him as a co-agent.

Alice arrived at the restaurant to meet me earlier than we'd planned, a result of her excitement to shop for me, no doubt. She slipped onto the seat beside me at the table as the waitress cleared our plates.

"Can I join you for baklava?" she asked, flashing a hopeful grin. "No one should talk about anything serious over dessert… Hi, Victoria… oh, and hello, I'm Bella's friend Alice. I don't think we've met."

Instead of extending her hand, she raised it and waved with a tiny flourish at Jasper.

"Alice, this is Jasper. He's just moved here and is starting to work for Victoria."

"It's a pleasure, Alice," he said, smiling widely. "I would be delighted if you could join us for dessert."

One piece of pistachio-encrusted honeyed goodness later and I was completely stuffed. Leaning back into my chair, I realized that the conversation at the table had been completely overtaken by Alice and Jasper. They were enthusiastically discussing the respective merits of various indie bands neither Victoria nor I had ever heard of.

Victoria was the one to interrupt them. "We'd better head back to the office, Jasper. We've got a meeting at one. Alice, it was good to see you and Bella, we'll talk more about the upcoming changes later. Just focus on your writing and try not to worry… Jasper and I are here to take care of everything else."

We all exited the restaurant together and said our final goodbyes on the sidewalk before turning to head in separate directions.

"Bella, who _is_ he?!" Alice squealed once Victoria and Jasper had turned the corner. "And why have you been keeping him from me?"

She gripped onto my arm as she bounced alongside me.

"Down girl… I've only known him half an hour longer than you have!"

"Isn't he just the most beautiful?" she babbled on, all starry-eyed and effervescent. "Oh, Bella, I'm going to marry him!"

I could only laugh at her exuberance. "Well, I will only agree to be your maid of honor if you can help find me some perfect grown up clothes today, so we'd better get started."

Alice traipsed me through at least a half a dozen boutiques that afternoon. I had to admit, she really knew her stuff. Not once did she have me try something on that made me feel awkward or uncomfortable and I spent a lot more money than I had planned to. But in the end, I came away with several bags filled with simple and classic pieces I could mix and match into multiple outfits.

"I couldn't have done it without you, babe," I said, pulling Alice into a tight hug on the sidewalk outside the last shop we had visited.

"You can thank me by getting Jasper's number for me," she replied with a wink. "He needs a Washington native to show him around town!"

"I'll see what I can do. Thanks again, Alice. Really, you were so much help!"

We parted ways and I drove back out of the city, the truck's bench seat cluttered with shopping debris beside me. Once I reached the cabin, I hauled all of the bags, including the sack of mail I had picked up earlier, inside. I hung up my purchases in the closet, not wanting to wrinkle them before I'd even had a chance to wear them and I settled into the living room. I wanted to spend the evening working on my writing.

Thinking of the back-of-the-envelope scrawling I had done earlier in the day, I retrieved the letter from my purse to look it over. My notes were brief, but sufficient to trigger my memory. I remembered feeling the familiarity of that spot along the river, but I still couldn't put a finger on why I felt that way and it nagged at me.

I shook the thought out of my head again. I decided a dose of praise from an enthusiastic reader might be just what I needed to boost my confidence and propel my work forward, so I tore open the envelope, careful not to disturb my own handwriting on its backside.

Inside was a single sheet of crisp, white paper creased into thirds. I opened it and flipped it over, confused at first, wondering if it was completely blank. But I finally saw the words, obscured in one of the folds, written in tiny, elegant script.

_Isabella, I am watching you.

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**Thanks so much to everyone who is reading… it's so exciting to see that people are actually interested in my little story!**

**If you have any questions or comments or suggestions for improvement I'd really appreciate hearing them. I am brand new to this, so if there is anything I could be doing differently to make it a better read I would love to hear about it before my chapter count gets up into the double digits!**


	5. Atmosphere

**I own nothing, I just like to play!**

**This story is rated M for mature content. Please refrain from reading if you find violence or sexual themes objectionable or if you are underage.

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Chapter 4 – Atmosphere

Atmosphere:  
The dominant mood or emotional tone of a work of art, as of a play or novel.

* * *

_Isabella, I am watching you._

The words made me snap my head up reflexively to look around the room. No one was actually watching me, of course, but I felt a sense of unease unlike anything I had ever experienced.

I stood up, walked across to the bay window and looked out over the lawn. The evening sky was already beginning to hang heavily, but I still had an unobstructed view across the clearing to the encircling tower of green. Nothing was obviously out of place and I could see no indication that I was in any imminent danger.

Despite this, my stomach tensed and squeezed, spiraling tightly within me – panic was beginning to set in. I rushed from room to room and from window to window, scrutinizing the cabin's exterior from every possible angle. And still, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. I hurried to double check that all the doors and windows were tightly locked. I looked inside all of the closets and even under the bed.

Still nothing.

I was so grateful that the cabin didn't have a basement.

Looking at the paper still clenched in my hand, I read the words again. "Breathe Bella… just breathe," I whispered to myself, my voice silent and shaky.

As much as I tried to calm myself, as much as I tried to convince myself that this note must just be from a creepy but harmless fan, I was still petrified. If some overzealous reader wanted to stalk or harm me, he could easily have followed me home from the post office – there was only one in North Bend. If there was someone out there who really wanted to find me I had certainly made it a possibility.

I snatched the envelope back up from the table in the living room and flipped it over to look at the postmark. It had been mailed more than a week earlier from Portland, Oregon. It must have been sitting in my post office box for some time before I picked it up. It struck me that if the person who had sent it had been using it as a way to track me, he would have needed to have waited in North Bend for days until I retrieved the letter. And then he would have had to have followed me as I made my way around Seattle for the day before I returned to the cabin. To the rational part of my brain, this seemed like an unlikely chain of events.

I considered my options. While I was starting to realize that there was really only a remote chance that something terrible might actually happen to me if I remained in the cabin overnight, I also knew that it would be nearly impossible to sleep or work, impossible to do anything but worry if I stayed. I thought about driving into the city to stay with Alice or Angela. Each of them had a spare bedroom I knew I would be more than welcome to use. But before I made any sort of a decision, I wanted to talk to my father.

Charlie was the chief of police back in Forks. We had never had the closest of father-daughter relationships, but I knew he would be the best source of advice for me in this situation. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and connected to his number. After three rings, his answering machine kicked in.

"This is Charlie Swan. I can't take your call right now, so leave me a message and I'll get back to you."

"Shit," I cursed under my breath as the beep sounded. He was probably working late. Charlie was usually at home in front of the flat screen when he wasn't at work or out on a fishing trip. He wasn't exactly a social butterfly. I made a mental note to buy him a cell phone for Christmas.

"Charlie… Dad, it's Bella. I'm sorry it's been a while since I've called. Can you get back to me as soon as you pick up this message… please? I really need to ask you about something… okay, thanks… ummm, I'll talk to you soon… okay, bye."

Leaving a voice message turned me into a babbling mess at the best of times. I could never quite manage to stop speaking into the void with any grace.

As I slipped my phone back into my pocket, I thought again about running. I could pack a bag, bundle Jake into his carrier and be on the road in less than ten minutes if I hurried. It would be easy to flee to the city for a night or two and I knew it was probably the most cautious thing I could do under the circumstances. But I also knew that leaving would make it difficult for me to return. And I would have to return eventually – I couldn't live in Alice's or Angela's spare bedroom indefinitely. It wouldn't be any easier or any safer to stay in the cabin the following night or the next week.

So I decided that the best way forward was to fight my fear; to confront it head on. I wasn't going to let a tiny string of words on paper chase me out of my own home.

I went into my office, unlocked a desk drawer and looked down at the contents. Inside the drawer was the semi-automatic pistol I had bought for the sake of research when I had been writing my first novel. I had even taken some lessons at a local firing range to learn how to handle it properly. I hadn't had any reason to touch a weapon since then, but I was suddenly thankful that I had decided to hold onto this one.

Retrieving the gun from the drawer, I balanced it flat on my palm, feeling the cool weight of it against my skin. I ejected the magazine to check for ammunition and then snapped it back into place again. Gripping the handle, I slid my middle finger over the trigger and held my arm out so I could look down the sights.

Nothing else in the world feels quite like holding a gun.

I tucked it into the back of my jeans at the waist and returned to the living room. Crossing back over to the window, I looked outside again. I could still see nothing out of the ordinary. Silently counting to three, I opened the front door by just a crack and peeked out. My heart hammered in my chest. I half expected to see someone there waiting for me, some dark, ominous figure, but the porch was empty as usual. Emboldened, I swung the door wide and stepped outside slowly, hyper-aware, trying to force my eyes to penetrate into the unruly mesh of the forest as I scanned the tree line.

I paused, testing out the silence. Apart from the whispers of a lazy, rustling breeze, I was completely alone.

Satisfied as I was going to be that no one was waiting out there to get me, I headed back inside and made my way to the kitchen. I wasn't feeling very hungry, but fixing some dinner would be a welcome distraction. It was something absolutely ordinary that I could do under extraordinary circumstances. Usually quite an avid cook, I enjoyed trying out new or complicated recipes, but I decided to keep things simple and started preparations for a huge pot of soup. As a long-time vegetarian, chicken noodle was not an option, but I could make my own version of comfort food. I pulled a stock pot and a bag of dried red lentils out of the cupboard and started heating some oil within the pot on the stove top. I chopped and sliced, unleashing my nervous energy on onions, carrots and peppers as they crossed my cutting board. I wanted to lose myself in the colorful, soothing world of vegetables and spices.

But I heard a sudden shatter of noise from the living room, the distinct sound of breaking glass, and I felt my insides calcify with fear. Distracted, I accidentally slid the blade across my hand as I looked up towards the doorway, carving a ragged cleft into the flesh of my index finger. I gasped in a quick breath as I dropped the knife in shock and watched, stunned and unmoving as the wound began to bleed, liquid crimson dripping onto the pale tile of the counter top.

I jammed my finger to my mouth, sucking to quell the flow, the blood like an ingot on my tongue. I drew the pistol from my waistband and briefly pulled my injured hand from my lips to rack the slide. I released the safety and forced myself forward to investigate. Creeping tentatively across the kitchen, I strained to hear anything but the hushed hiss of vegetables set to sauté.

Peeking reluctantly into the living room, the gun held out in front of me, I immediately recognized the source of the clatter.

"Furry little bastard," I sighed, exhaling a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Jake regarded me coolly from an empty shelf on a tall bookcase, two large picture frames and a blue vase in ruins on the wooden floor beneath him.

I felt a single tear begin to burn wetly and trail down my cheek. My nerves were completely frayed and I couldn't believe that I was standing in my living room with a gun trained on my own cat. Lowering the gun to my side, my hand quaked uncontrollably.

Turning back into the kitchen, I shut off the stove. I hadn't really had much of an appetite to begin with and I was getting tired of trying to pretend that I was just spending a regular evening at home. I looked at my finger. The gash, while deep and angry, didn't seem serious enough to require stitches, so I cleaned it carefully and bandaged it with gauze. I wiped my blood from the counter but decided to just leave the rest of the mess I had made during my aborted attempt at dinner. I would take care of it in the morning.

I began to pick through the debris on the floor of the living room. Surprisingly, the glass covering a photo of me on a hike with Alice and Angela during our time at college was completely intact. Just one corner of the frame was dented where it must have impacted the ground. A picture of my mother, Renee, with her husband Phil had unfortunately not fared so well. The frame was unharmed, but the glass had fractured into jagged strips that were strewn across the floor like fallen icicles. I would have to buy a new frame the next time I was in the city. And the vase, which had once held flowers sent to congratulate me on the publication of my book, was completely unsalvageable.

Once the floor was safe for him again, I shooed Jake down from his perch so I could put the pictures back up on the shelf. I looked again at the photo of me with Alice and Angela, remembering the day it had been taken. We had driven east of the city, out to Snoqualmie Falls, for an afternoon of hiking with our then boyfriends, Mike and Ben, and Alice's flavor of the week. Ben and Angela had stayed together after college, but I had parted ways with Mike during our senior year. And Alice had never been with anyone long enough for it to count. She had always said she was just filling her time until the right guy came along.

I needed to remember to try to put her in touch with Jasper. I had never seen her so enthusiastic over a man.

I looked around the room, trying to think of something to do to keep myself occupied. I was still shaken and I was really beginning to question my decision to remain in the cabin. But the idea of heading out into the darkness to bridge the gap between the porch and the truck was absolutely terrifying. The night had set in completely, and the cabin's windows loomed, suspended like smudged charcoal from the glossy log walls. Looking at them made me feel too vulnerable and too on display so I got up and pulled every set of curtains in the house, closing myself into cocooned seclusion. I felt like a character in a cheesy horror movie, sealing up the windows to keep the zombies and monsters at bay.

Sitting down on the couch, I tried to unwind. I turned the television on, seeking a distraction from the inundating veil of silence. I cycled through the channels, settling on a nondescript sitcom, hoping some canned laughter might lighten the mood. But as I looked over at the plastic bag of mail still sitting on the floor, I was hit with a sudden resurgence of fear.

What if there were other letters like the one I'd opened?

I slid down from the couch onto my knees and dumped the bag, feathering the letters out onto the floor in front of me. I scanned the postmarks and the handwriting, raking my hands through the pile, searching out anything familiar. I began tearing into them systematically, poring over each envelope before ripping it open. My stomach clenched in apprehension with every paper that I unfolded. I sat there transfixed, frozen in time as I skimmed through each letter, searching for any hint of someone who might intend malice. But I found nothing in the letters other than the usual collections of words from well wishers and advice seekers.

Instead of feeling relieved, I was exhausted.

I crawled up onto the couch and stretched out across it on my back. I rested my head on a pillow and pulled an afghan up to my chin. Closing my eyes, trying to will myself into relaxation, I forced myself to lie still. And long before I would have expected it, perhaps as a coping response to the evening's stresses, I fell asleep fully clothed and with the lights shining brightly.

When I woke up again I was groggy and disoriented. I wasn't used to sleeping anywhere but my own bed. My relief that the night had ended was overwhelming - I felt like I had been granted a reprieve.

The television had remained on overnight and the early morning news prattled away in the background.

"Police are asking for your help today in their search for eighteen year old Katrina Denali."

I opened my eyes, rolling over onto my side to face the television.

"The Issaquah teen was last seen late yesterday morning when she left her parents' home to visit the University of Washington campus where she is due to begin classes at the end of the month."

The image of a cheerleader on the screen stared out at me, sky-eyed and smiling.

"She missed a planned meet-up with friends in the afternoon and failed to return home last night."

Jesus fucking Christ.

"Katrina was last seen wearing a green and white striped t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. She was driving a black 2003 Honda Civic with license plate number 355-JFL."

I sat upright, leaning towards the television, squinting so that I could be sure.

"Anyone who has seen her or her vehicle or has any information about this disappearance is asked to contact the King County Sherriff's office at (206) 296-3311."

But there was never any real doubt. Katrina Denali looked exactly like the dead girl in my story.

* * *

**Thank you to every single one of you who has taken the time to read and especially to those who have reviewed, favorited and/or put the story on alert. I value every one of your messages and I am really grateful to have the feedback. It means so much to me that lots of you are enjoying my crazy little story!**

**In particular, I am incredibly thankful to americnxidiot who wrote an amazing recommendation for this fic on the lazy yet discerning ficster blog. This has made me giddy and terrified all at once and I really hope I can live up to expectations!**

**Please don't hesitate to drop me a message if you have any comments or questions about the story. I know it's a little bit out there, but I think the upcoming few chapters will explain a lot!**


	6. Setting

**I own nothing, I just like to play!**

**This story is rated M for mature content. Please refrain from reading if you find violence or sexual themes objectionable or if you are underage.

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**

Chapter 5 – Setting

Setting:  
The locale or period in which the action of a novel, play, film, etc., takes place.

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As the cheerleader's image faded from the screen and the news anchor moved on to the next story, I sat in still, bewildered silence. I just couldn't fathom how a girl I had created in my head three days earlier could somehow actually exist. I wondered if perhaps I had seen her before – maybe at a signing or just out and about in the city. I must have seen her somewhere and then buried her away in my subconscious until she blossomed into a character to use in my story. Nothing else made any sense.

That still didn't explain how or why I had seen her die horribly in my imagination two nights before she became a missing person, but it was the only thing I could think of that wasn't completely insane. I tried desperately to convince myself that it could just all be some strange coincidence. If Katrina Denali was found, alive and well, I would be able to forget that any of this had happened.

But even if I had somehow had a precognitive glimpse of this girl's murder, I couldn't think of any way that knowledge would be at all useful in helping to find her or to prevent her from dying. The only thing I knew was that the girl in my vision had been killed in a dark and remote forested place. That described half of Washington State.

There was nothing I could do but wait.

I checked my watch. 5:12 am. The sun wouldn't even be up for another half an hour.

Getting up off the couch, I shrugged the afghan from my shoulders and crossed over to the window. I lifted the edge of the curtain back and peeked out into the early morning gray. The clearing was still a tapestry of shadow, but I could make out the surrounding trees as a harsh line of midnight green. I allowed the curtain to drop back into place. As far as I could tell, I was still completely alone.

All of the sitting around was making me twitchy. I ate a quick breakfast, cleaned the previous night's mess out of the kitchen and reorganized all of the letters I had left on the living room floor back into the plastic bag. I would have to remember to take them over to Angela's house the next time I was in the city. When I was finished, I decided to take a bath rather than my usual shower. I needed to get cleaned up, but I was still feeling unsettled and I knew it was not the time for me to invite the infamous scene from Psycho to run through my head.

As I lay in the tub, my body completely enveloped in fine, white foam, I rested my head back against the rim and closed my eyes. I didn't often make the time for a bubble bath, so I wanted to try to enjoy the luxury rather than dwell upon my irrational fear of the shower. I had watched Renee's copy of that movie at a much younger age than I should have. It had made me shower with the curtain pulled back for years as a child and teenager. I still occasionally got creeped out by a hotel shower even as an adult.

I thought about the missing Denali girl again. If she did turn up dead, I wondered if I had already seen the spot where she would be found in my head. I remembered how she had looked spread out there in the murky morning, nearly afloat on her fluvial bed. I still had that nagging feeling of familiarity – I was almost certain that I had seen that place before.

When the water began to cool, I drained the tub and wrapped myself in a towel. I got dressed and then headed back to the living room where I caught Jake back up on the bookcase, nestled in between the two picture frames he had knocked onto the ground the previous night. Stepping towards him quickly, I swatted him down to the floor.

"You know you're not supposed to be up there," I scolded. He glared back up at me with effortless disdain. "You have lots of perfectly good places to sleep."

His tail flicked in silent protest as he stalked away.

"Jerk," I muttered after him. I was afraid I was starting to turn into one of those people who carry on full conversations with their pets because they don't have enough human contact.

As I turned to straighten the picture frames, my eyes focussed on the photo that had been taken with Alice and Angela. We'd had such a great time that day. We had hiked down to the boardwalk at the base of Snoqualmie Falls along a well-used dirt path. It had been a busy summer's afternoon and the walkway had been packed with tourists. At the bottom though, we had wandered away from the main route to follow the river downstream, scrambling through the leafy ferns along a narrow trail that ran parallel to the river. I remembered how the trees had arched and swayed over the water, creating a verdant, leafy corridor. I remembered Mike jumping across the tops of exposed river rocks to reach a tiny island in the middle of the stream.

I froze. I suddenly knew why that place in my mind had seemed so familiar.

I fired up my laptop and scanned through the folders of photographs until I found the one that contained the other pictures I had taken that day. Searching amongst the thumbnails, I quickly found an image of Mike standing on that small patch of land in the middle of the river and I clicked on it to expand it to full size. He beckoned to the camera with a curled finger, daring us to try to walk across the water without getting wet too.

Closing my eyes, I pressed my thumb and index finger onto my eyelids until I saw static.

What the hell did this mean?

I considered placing an anonymous call to the police. If Katrina Denali was dead and her body was somehow lying out there in the Snoqualmie River, I wanted them to find her as quickly as possible. But I didn't want to send them on a wild goose chase either. And deep down, I was still hoping she would turn up alive. Placing that call would mean that I really believed there was a reasonable probability that she was out there in the river and that the events in my imagination had somehow transpired in the real world. I wasn't anywhere close to being ready to believe that.

What I could do, though, was go to the river to assure myself that she wasn't there. I couldn't just sit around the cabin waiting for the next newscast, but I definitely didn't want to have to go out there alone. It was Saturday and the main trail down to waterfall would be full of other visitors, but the track along the river didn't attract nearly as many people. I decided to call Alice to ask her to go with me. I wouldn't have to explain my full reason for wanting to go to her.

It was still early – a little too early for a social call on the weekend, but Alice had always been an early riser.

It took her several rings to pick up. "Hello?" she whispered, sounding groggy.

"Oh, shit… did I wake you? You never sleep in!"

"I was almost awake. What time is it?"

"It's just coming up on eight o'clock. I really thought you'd be out of bed already… I'll let you go back to sleep." I heard a muffled voice in the background. "Oh god, someone is there with you? I am so, so sorry…"

"It's okay, Bella." She giggled and let out a tiny shriek before she covered the receiver.

"I'll call you back later on," I tried to tell her.

Nothing.

"Alice?"

Still nothing.

"Alice? I'm going to hang up now..."

She finally answered me with a breathless gasp. "Sorry!"

"I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"I'll call you back this afternoon," she said, giggling again as she hung up the phone.

I sighed. I couldn't think of anyone else I could invite to go with me. Angela and Ben wouldn't want to lug their babies around in the woods and most other people I knew were more acquaintances or professional contacts than friends.

I was on my own.

After slipping the pistol into my purse and grabbing a jacket, I checked the windows one last time before proceeding outside. The morning air was cool and damp, but the sun shone brightly, hanging low in the eastern sky. I looked around cautiously before making a dash for the truck. When I was safely stowed inside the cab, I looked around at my surroundings again. I was still completely alone.

I started the truck, put it in reverse and backed down the long driveway to the gravel road that led to the interstate. I headed west, towards the city and cut up to highway 202 when I reached North Bend. From there, it was a short drive through the town of Snoqualmie to the parking lot at the top of the falls.

It was just before nine o'clock, but the lot was already beginning to fill with cars. I parked and crossed over the highway, heading towards the observation deck that perched high on the rim of the bowl of rock that the falls tumbled into. I stood beneath the covered pavilion for a few moments, resting my elbows on the wooden railing, mesmerized by the endless topple and spray. Water braided roughly over the edge, falling in brute curtains down to the pool below. The sky was nearly clear with only a few gauze stretched clouds and the rising plumes of delicate mist danced rainbows in the summer sun.

The trail down to the river was busy with people. While the view from the top was spectacular, to visit the place where the water thundered into itself was a truly breathtaking experience. I hurried down to the bottom, descending through the old growth firs along a wide dirt path. At the base, a boardwalk turned back along the river towards the falls, but I continued on a narrow trail through the woods that would lead me downstream.

The water rushed and gurgled alongside me, glowing mountain teal in the sunshine with watery filaments tethering it to the rocky riverbed below. Giant ferns pressed in at the edges of the trail, creating a leafy aisle that wove through the trees that stood tall and stately on either side – a cathedral grove. Overhead, the canopy swayed and stretched, branches leaning and reaching out to arch across the river.

I hurried along. I knew if I thought too much about what I was doing I would turn around and run.

It didn't take me long to find the spot. The river shallowed significantly and several small boulders peppered the waters between the shore and a small island. I stepped across a few of the stones, holding my arms out for balance until I was standing in the exact spot where I had seen the girl's body in my mind. Perching carefully on the smooth rock, I looked up and downstream, searching for any clue that she had ever been there. But all I could see were river, trees, stone and sky and all I could hear was the quiet rhapsody of water over land and shivering leaves, sunlit and silvered. I stood there for several minutes, completely encased in a bubble of hushed solitude.

I made a quick retreat back through the forest to the base of the falls and up the trail to the roadside. My phone rang as I climbed back into the truck. I looked at the display. Charlie.

"Hey, Dad," I answered, thinking about how little I could tell him about what had been happening without making him think that I was losing it.

"Hi, kid. I got your message."

"I'm sorry I haven't called sooner," I started. I hadn't talked to him in over a month and I hadn't seen him in several more than that. "I've just been…"

"It's okay. I know you're busy…"

We slipped into an awkward silence.

Charlie sighed almost inaudibly before speaking again. "So, what did you want to ask me about, Bella? It sounded important."

"I just… I got a weird fan letter in the mail yesterday. I think I was overreacting, but I wanted to know what you thought I should do."

"What did it say?" he asked.

"It said only… I'm watching you," I told him.

He switched right into cop mode. "Have you seen anything or anyone out of the ordinary? Have you ever had a letter like this before?"

"No, it's just this one letter… I'm sure it's nothing to really worry about. It just freaked me out a bit when I opened it."

"Well, you should take it to the police, Bella. You're probably right that you don't need to worry, but they can process it for evidence and start a record on file in case the situation escalates. I'll make some calls and get the name of someone you can go talk to, okay?"

"Thanks, Dad."

"I'll call you back" he told me and disconnected.

I stopped in North Bend for a few groceries before I headed home. It was just after one o'clock when I got back to the cabin and I was much more tired than I should have been at midday. After I put the groceries away, I took the gun out of my purse and went to lie down on my bed for a nap. I needed to make up for both sleeping on the couch and having had such an early morning.

When I woke up, I could tell that several hours had passed without having to look at my watch. Alice and Charlie had both left messages while I was asleep. Charlie had left the name and number of the police chief in North Bend for me and Alice had wanted to tell me all about her latest conquest. I was eager to call her back to get the scoop. But first, I went into the living room and turned on the television so I could watch the evening news. I needed to know if there was any new information about the missing cheerleader.

She was the lead story.

"Good evening and thank you for joining us, I'm Lee Stephens. In our top story, police are still searching for eighteen year old Katrina Denali tonight. She disappeared yesterday after leaving her parents' house in Issaquah to visit the campus of the University of Washington where she is scheduled to begin studies this fall."

They showed a different photograph this time and I studied her face again. There could be no mistaking it – she was identical to the girl I had seen in my mind.

"Her mother, Sasha Denali, spoke to the press this afternoon."

On the screen, an older version of the missing teenager stepped up to a podium and spoke into a large bouquet of microphones.

"Kate… Katie," her mother sobbed, her eyes red-rimmed and raw as she tried to maintain her composure before the flashing sea of journalists. "Baby, if you're watching this… we're looking everywhere for you and we're going to find you… I love you, Katie… your Dad and I love you so, so much."

She paused, wiping at her eyes with a tissue.

"And to whoever took our daughter… please, please…" she squeaked out in a whisper. "Please just let her come home to us."

I pressed the button on the remote to turn the television off. Her grief was just too difficult to witness.

Needing some cheering up, I called Alice back to talk to her about her latest man.

"Oh Bella, I've had just the best day ever!" she exclaimed in greeting.

"Yeah, it sounded like you were… enjoying yourself this morning."

She laughed. "Don't be mad at me…"

"I'm not mad, Alice. I need to apologize to you again for calling so early."

"You might be not be thrilled when you find out who was here," she told me and then paused.

I racked my brain, trying to imagine who she could possibly have slept with that would upset me. "Oh my god, Alice… Mike?"

"Bella! Ewww… no!" She laughed again. "God, just… no."

"Well, who then? Tell me!"

"Jasper," she whispered and I could hear adoration in her voice.

"How did…"

"I just couldn't stop thinking about him the whole time we were shopping so after you left I decided to take a chance and I went over to your agency and asked him to have dinner with me and he said yes! So we had dinner and then dessert and then we walked and talked and talked and we ended up back here at my place. Bella, he's so amazing."

I smiled. "Alice, why would I be angry at you for going out with Jasper? I'm just glad that things have gone so well with him so far."

"I was just a little worried that you'd feel uncomfortable because Jazz is your new agent and now I've sort of inserted myself into your professional circle, you know?"

"Jesus, Alice. You've got a pet name for him already? And I really don't want to hear about anyone inserting anything anywhere, okay?"

She giggled at me. "You're really okay with it?"

"Completely. I only met him briefly yesterday, but he seems like a great guy and if he makes you happy then he makes me happy."

"Thank you," she told me and I could hear a hint of relief in her tone. "Now, I'd better run. He's picking me up again in half an hour for dinner and I still have to get changed. We'll all have to do something together really soon, okay?"

"It's a date," I promised. "Have fun tonight."

Once I was off the phone, I wanted to get back to my writing, but I was still feeling so confused and uncertain about the missing girl and the things I had seen in my head. So instead, I spent the evening picking back through my notes and the bits of text I had already written. But I found nothing that might help me make more sense of the situation. Until the girl turned up, either dead or alive, I wouldn't know how strange things actually might be.

In the morning, I got dressed and checked the news before doing anything else. There was no new information – the police had still found no trace of Kate Denali or her vehicle. I decided to head back to the river again to check for her. I just couldn't get that place out of my mind. I knew I couldn't continue to go back there indefinitely, but I told myself that I would go for a few more days unless I heard that she had been found.

I didn't park at the top of the falls this time. I'd looked up a map of the area and found a web of back roads that passed closer to the river. I would have to walk through a stand of trees to get to the water, but it was a much shorter distance than the trek from the boardwalk. When I was sure I was on the correct stretch of road, I parked where I could see a narrow path running into the woods and tucked the pistol into the back of my jeans as I swung out of the truck.

I was even more frightened than I had been the day before, but I knew that I had to force myself to continue. If something had happened to the girl, if she had somehow ended up in this place, I needed to know. I followed the lonely trail through the band of forest, the movements of the canopy above echoing in shadow on the teeming undergrowth that spread out around me below.

As I broke through the curtain of green into the sunshine at the river's edge, her body was the first thing I could see. I kept stepping closer, unable to stop or look away, even as I felt the mountain-cold water soak through my shoes and sting at my toes. I had already seen this scene in my mind, but actually standing before her in person was infinitely more gruesome – by full daylight I could see every brutal wound and injury.

The water sloshed over and around her in a teasing tide, her skin tinged the opaline blue of moonlight on snow. She lay with her head pointing downstream, face tilted slightly towards the river. A silver earring, tiny and perfect, glinted in the light as it dangled from her ear.

I couldn't quite see over to her other side to check for its mate.

I was consumed with an overwhelming urge to cover her body. I wanted so badly to give her that last dignity. Despite being long dead, she looked completely vulnerable. Thinking of the blanket I kept in my truck in case of an emergency, I wished I had carried it along with me.

Wading deeper into the water, I felt it burn up past my ankles as I stepped around to the other side of the body. Her hair was matted to the side of her face, obscuring my view, a cake of blonde and blood and earth. I bent to crouch beside her and reached my hand forward, reluctant and trembling.

I needed to see.

I pulled gingerly at the clod of hair with the tips of my fingers, peeling it from her face. The back of my hand brushed across the coolness of her cheek as I dug down to expose her ear. I snapped back instinctively when I saw it – the jagged bifurcation where an earring had been cleaved through her flesh.

My gaze wandered across to the opaque dusk of her eyes and down over the gaping chasm torn through her neck. I felt a sudden dizziness overwhelm me and turned backwards, slipping down to my hands and knees on the hardness of the riverbed. I watched the water stream past me, frothing like white lace over the pebbles and boulders and my hands. My stomach began to heave and I vomited repeatedly, choking and gagging uncontrollably until there was absolutely nothing left inside me.

I tried to catch my breath. As tears burned hot trails down my cheeks, I squeezed my eyes closed and an onslaught of images flashed through my mind.

* * *

He paces methodically through the trees. Sunbeams filter through the canopy overhead, setting the moss-covered, spidery branches alight in luminous shades of crystalline green – emerald, jade, malachite. In the distance, he can just make out the quiet susurration of the river over subtle breaths of wind. He sifts through the speckled fronds, his fingers encased in blue latex, poking and probing his way through the foliage.

He is searching for something.

* * *

My eyes flew open and I scrambled to my feet, water splashing wildly around me. Reaching back underneath my jacket, I pulled the gun from my waistband. All I could think to do was run.

* * *

**Psycho really did fuck me up a bit when I was a little kid… and I grew up into an adult who still prefers a transparent shower curtain.**

**Another big thank you to americnxidiot for writing additional recs for this story… I am so beyond grateful! And thank you to everyone out there who is reading. I am really blown away when I see how many of you are reading… and from all over the world.**

**Reviews make my day! I really appreciate any feedback and I especially love hearing theories on what will happen next…**


	7. Mystery

**I own nothing, I just like to play!**

**This story is rated M for mature content. Please refrain from reading if you find violence or sexual themes objectionable or if you are underage.

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Chapter 6 – Mystery

Mystery:  
A novel, short story, play or film whose plot involves a crime or other event that remains puzzlingly unsettled until the very end.

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I took off at a sprint. My gut reaction was to run in the opposite direction from which I had come – to get as far away as possible from someone who might be watching or pursuing me, but I had no idea what might be disguised by the dense tangle of forest on the opposite side of the river. So I sloshed my way upstream, fighting against the current towards the distant thrumming of the falls and towards the relative safety of a group of other people. But before I had made it very far, the rushing water rose above my knees and soaked up my thighs, high and cold, and the relentless torrent and coiling eddies threatened to sweep me along with the next swell.

I had no choice remaining but to retreat to the trees. Spinning completely around, I examined my surroundings, searching for any indication of a potential predator. I saw nothing but endless streaming blue, endless towering green and an overhanging stretch of cloudless sky. I slid my phone out of my pocket and dialed 9-1-1. If I was going to risk a dash back through the woods to my truck, I wanted to know that the authorities were on their way to find me if anything went wrong.

A man's voice answered, steady and smooth. "9-1-1, what's the nature of your emergency?"

"I…" I struggled to catch my breath. "I've found a body. I think it's that missing girl. It's Katrina Denali."

"Okay ma'am, I'm going to send someone out to you. Please try to remain calm. Can you tell me your name and location?"

"My name is Isabella Swan. I'm in the forest, out on the Snoqualmie River… close to the falls."

"I'm going to dispatch a unit to you right away, Isabella. Are you standing close to a road?"

"No… no, I'm standing in the middle of the river. The body… it's in the river." I paused as I heard a rustle and crack amongst the trees further upstream. Standing rooted to the spot, I scanned the woods for any sign of movement. I whispered carefully into the phone. "Oh, god. I think there's someone out here with me. I think he's here…"

Whirling around, I began to run again, struggling to pick up speed in the knee-deep water. It was as though I had slipped into one of those terrible dreams in which you try desperately to escape danger but everything happens in absolute slowness – like moving through syrup thickened by winter. I headed back down the river towards the body, back towards the path that would take me out to the truck. I should have gone that way in the first place but I had been too terrified that someone had been there waiting to intercept me. I could hear the operator's voice bob in and out of my range of hearing as the phone bounced against my cheek.

"… calm down… need you to tell… find you…"

"I'm running out to the road... please, just get here!" I shrieked into the handset.

My feet thrashed more loudly through the water as I approached the rocky shallows where the girl's corpse still lay inanimate and inert. With less fluid to impede my strides, I tried to accelerate over the riverbed and slipped slightly, the wet rubber of my shoes sliding over surfaces scoured slick by the interminable surge and flow. Without daring to look behind me, I curved my trajectory towards the gap in the trees and barreled into the woods at full speed.

As I raced into the forest, it blurred to indistinct, fuzzy shades of brown and green around me. The foliage immediately muffled the sounds of the river and all I could hear was the slamming of my feet along the narrow string of dirt and the crashing of my heart as it sent my blood squeezing through my veins. I plowed through at full speed, catching and tearing the sleeve of my jacket on a branch that hung too close to the path. But I allowed nothing to slow me down. I just focused on making it to that place in front of me where I could see the luminous shafts of daylight struggling to seep in through the perpetual gloom.

When I finally burst through the tree line on the opposite side of the woods, I ran straight for the truck. I had never been so happy to see the old red colossus in my entire life. I didn't pause to look at anything else until I was sitting inside the cab with the door slammed and locked behind me. I slid the gun down to the seat beside me and pressed the phone back to my ear, breathing heavily.

"Ma'am? Ma'am, are you still there?" The operator's voice had turned sharp and concerned.

I lowered my forehead to the steering wheel and sucked in the air in gasping breaths, deep and desperate.

"I'm here… I'm safe," I sputtered as I dissolved into long, violent sobs. For those few harrowing moments I had known the briefest glimpse of what it felt like to be that girl in the river who had tried to run for her life.

The voice on the phone interrupted my thoughts. "Can you tell me exactly where you are right now, Isabella?"

"I'm in my truck… it's an older red Chevy. I'm parked on the road that runs right along the Snoqualmie River… close to the waterfalls."

"Are you there alone? Are you in any immediate danger?"

"I… I don't think so," I told the operator as I lifted my head and looked carefully at my surroundings for the first time since I'd gotten into the truck. As far as I could see, both ahead of me through the windshield and behind me in the rear view mirror, the road was completely empty. "I thought someone was following me, but I don't see anyone now."

"Do you know which side of the river you're on?"

I had never been very good with directions. "The north side, I think? The same side as the big hotel up by the falls."

"We've got officers on the way to you now. Just remain on the line with me until they get there, okay?"

"Should I stay where I am? I could drive up towards the hotel," I suggested. I was very eager to get as far away from there as possible.

"Stay right where you are as long as you're safe," the dispatcher insisted. "The police are coming to you."

And after a few moments, I could hear the first oscillating wail of a siren in the distance. The town of Snoqualmie was just on the other side of the falls and it hadn't taken long for the first response to be launched. I knew it would be mere minutes until I would see the blinking flash of police lights reflected in the truck's mirrors, but each second that I waited ticked by with excruciating slowness.

"I can hear the siren," I told the man on the phone. "They're getting close."

"Good. Now don't hang up until they arrive, okay Isabella?"

"Okay," I promised.

As I waited, coldness began to seep into my consciousness. My lower half was completely saturated with river water. I started the engine and set the heater to full blast before I reached underneath the bench seat to pull out my emergency blanket. I wrapped it tightly around my shoulders. It was rough, ancient and musty, but it would help me to conserve body heat.

When the police car came into view in my mirror, I thanked the operator and ended the call. The siren gave off a final tweak and fell silent, but the lights continued to flicker behind me. As the officer exited his vehicle and began walking toward mine, I thought to stow the gun away in the glove compartment. He arrived at the side of the truck and rapped a knuckle against the window.

He spoke to me through the glass. "Miss, did you place a call to 9-1-1?"

I fumbled with the handle as I struggled to unroll the manual window. "Yes, that was me. I found a body while I was walking by the river… I think it's that missing girl I've seen on the news."

"What's your name?"

"Bella Swan," I told him.

"Okay Bella, I'm Officer King. Can you tell me more specifically where you found the body?"

I turned my head towards the path that led into the woods and pointed at it with my hand. "If you follow that trail to the river you'll see her as soon as you step out of the trees. She's right there in the water."

"Alright, I'm going to go over there to take a look. You stay right where you are, okay?"

I nodded my agreement and then watched as he rounded the front end of the truck and disappeared into the forest. I rolled my window back up until it was completely closed and waited. After a few minutes, I could hear the sirens of additional cars squealing in the distance as they approached. Officer King re-emerged from the trees just as two cruisers appeared and pulled over to the side of the road ahead of the truck.

I remained inside as the three officers conferred at the roadside. After a short discussion, the two new arrivals headed into the forest. I wound the window down again as Officer King headed back over to talk to me.

"She's right where you said she'd be," he told me. "Now, we're going to have some questions for you, but we'd like to wait to have one of our detectives from the city speak to you. Are you able to wait here just a bit longer?"

Waiting around there was the last thing I wanted to do. "Yes, of course I can."

"Good, you just hold tight here and I'll bring him over here after he arrives."

Before long, the road was swarming in police officers, both uniformed and in plain clothes. They gathered to speak to each other in groups in order to strategize. Only a few trickled in and out of the trees and I noticed that they all wore latex gloves in either blue or white. I thought back to the vision I'd had while I was on my knees on the riverbed and wondered if the eyes I had seen through might be among those searching through the forest at that very moment. I shivered despite the warmth generated by the heater and my insulating blanket.

I was drawn back into my immediate reality as I looked into my side mirror and noticed Officer King approaching the truck with another man. He spoke to me as he reappeared at my window. "Bella, this is Detective Cullen. He's a lead investigator out of Seattle and he's going to ask you some questions, okay?"

I nodded and Officer King headed off, back towards his cruiser. I looked up at the detective, squinting to make out his features. The morning sun glowed harshly behind him, silhouetting him in a bright halo of light. All I could see was that he was very tall, with a sturdy, muscular frame.

"Miss Swan, my name is Emmett Cullen," he told me in introduction as he pulled a pen and notebook from his pocket.

"Please, call me Bella," I said, opening the truck's door and sliding from the seat so I that was standing on the road next to him. I angled my body so that I could speak to him without having to squint.

"Okay then, Bella. I'd just like to ask you a few questions about what you've seen here this morning. I know we've already kept you waiting for a while now, so I'll try to make this brief."

"Of course, I want to help any way that I can."

"First, can I just have you write out your full name, date of birth and current address and telephone number here for me, please?" He opened his notebook to a blank sheet and handed it to me along with his pen. I turned to use the truck's seat for support as I wrote out all of my contact information.

"At approximately what time did you discover the body?" he asked as I handed the book and pen back to him.

"Well, I'm not sure exactly," I told him. "The last time I remember looking at a clock was before I left home. I'm not wearing a watch and the one on the dashboard doesn't work." I pointed back into the cab's interior with my thumb.

"But it was about 8:30 when I left my cabin and then I guess it took me about half an hour to drive over here. So it would have been a little after nine by the time I walked through to the river?"

"Can you tell me what happened when you got here this morning?"

"I parked my truck right where it is now and walked into the woods along that path over there. It leads straight to the river's edge and I found the body as soon as I got there... it's right out in the open."

He scratched a few notes into his book and then looked back at me. He gestured towards the trees with a slight tilt of his head. "Have you been here before?"

"Yes," I said, nodding at him.

He held my gaze, waiting for me to elaborate.

"I came out here with some friends a few years ago when I was a student at the University of Washington. We hiked down the path by the falls and then along the river."

"And not since then?"

For a moment I considered lying. It was going to be difficult to explain why I had come to this particular spot two days in a row.

"I actually came here yesterday as well," I admitted. "I did the full hike then, but today I came back just to look at the river."

It wasn't technically untruthful.

The detective furrowed his brow. "Why did you want to come back to the same spot again today?"

I wasn't sure how to answer his question in any way that wouldn't make me look either suspicious or insane. "Well," I said, pausing as my brain scrambled to come up with a reason that wouldn't sound ridiculous. "I'm a writer… and I was looking for inspiration. Somewhere I could write about in my next book."

The muscles in his forehead seemed to relax slightly with my answer. He believed me. "You're an author?" he asked, his mouth twisting up into half a dimpled smile. "Have you written anything I might have heard of?"

"I've only had one novel published so far. A mystery..."

"Ah, I don't read very many of those. I get to see enough crime on the job, I'm afraid."

"Yes, I imagine you do."

Detective Cullen looked back at his notes and then spoke again. "So let me make sure I understand this. You parked your truck right here when you arrived today?"

"Yes."

"And then you walked through the trees over there to the river and discovered the body?"

"Yes. I could see her as soon as I was out of the woods. Like I said, she's right out in the open."

"You're awfully wet, Bella," he said, looking down at my legs. My shoes and the cuffs of my jeans were coated in debris from the forest – pine needles, dirt, fragments of the previous year's leaves all dried out and brittle. "Did you go right into the river?"

"Yes, I did… I was too frightened to go back through the woods after I found her, so I was trying to walk up the along the river towards the falls to stay out in the open. But the water got too deep and then I heard something in the trees and I ran back here."

"What did you hear?"

"It was a cracking sound and a rustle of leaves. It could have been made by an animal, but I was afraid it was a person," I told him.

"Did you see anyone else while you were out here this morning?"

"No. I came right back to the truck and I didn't see or hear anything after that."

He took a moment to jot down several more notes in his book before continuing. "Did you touch or move the body in any way?"

I sighed. I knew he wasn't going to like my answer. "I didn't move her, but I touched her hair and her cheek."

His face tightened again as he spoke. "Why did you do that?"

"I… I'm not really sure," I told him. "I was in shock. She was clearly dead, I could see that from a distance, but I think I needed to be sure of what I was seeing. I just felt so overwhelmed… it didn't seem like she could possibly be real."

"So you walked right into the water and touched her hair? I don't understand why you would do that. You do know that you shouldn't interfere with a crime scene, don't you?" He was obviously beginning to have doubts about my story.

"Yes, of course I do. Should I be requesting a lawyer?" I asked, feeling flustered and uneasy at the direction his questioning had started to take.

"You're welcome to have a lawyer present, Miss Swan, if you feel that you need one, but this isn't an interrogation. I am just trying to ask you some routine questions about what happened here this morning."

"Okay." I knew that he was still suspicious of me and I didn't want to make myself look any more guilty by demanding an attorney. And the only lawyer I had was just responsible for advising me on contracts and business matters, anyway. "I do know that I shouldn't have touched her. I really am sorry… I was just upset and confused. I was sick to my stomach afterward."

"But you didn't take anything or move the body in any way?"

I shook my head. "No, of course not. She's still exactly where he put her."

Shit. I'd said far too much.

"Where he put her? Where _who_ put her?"

"I don't know. I just assumed it was a man who did this to her," I told him, trying to backpedal.

"And you believe she was moved here from another location?"

"It just… it looked like she was placed there, I guess. I really don't know anything else. I would tell you if I did."

The detective regarded me expressionlessly. He retrieved a business card from his pocket and handed it over to me. "If you think of anything else – anything else you might have seen or heard – anything at all, please give us a call. Even if it seems like a trivial detail to you, it might be something that can help with our investigation."

I took the card from him and held it in my hand, running my thumb along one edge. "I'll call you if I remember anything."

He started to walk away, but turned back towards me after a moment. "One last thing, Bella. What happened to your hand?" he asked, gesturing towards the bandages that still covered the cut on my left index finger.

"Oh, that's just from a minor incident in my kitchen. I really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a sharp knife." I regretted my choice of words as soon as they were out of my mouth. I had meant it as a self-deprecating joke, but under the circumstances my words did nothing to lighten the mood.

Emmett Cullen stared down at me solemnly. "I'll be in touch if I have more questions, Miss Swan. You're free to go." He turned and continued to walk away. I watched as he tucked his pen and notebook into a pocket and snapped on a pair of blue latex gloves before he disappeared into the trees.

I hopped back up into my truck, shifted into drive and curved back around on the road to drive out the way I'd come in. I couldn't get away from that place fast enough.

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**Sorry I was so slow in updating this time… life kicked me in the ass a bit this week :p**

**Thank you so, so much to the lovely lambcullen and hopefulhappenings09 for pimping this story out on their own fics (Landscapes and The Boy By the Window, respectively!). Thanks also to Hoosier Mama, finder-of-typos extraordinaire! And again, I would like to send my appreciation out to every single one of you who is reading this little tale. It truly is thrilling to hear from so many of you that you are enjoying the story and finding it really suspenseful.**

**I try to respond to all questions, comments and suggestions I receive in reviews and PMs… apologies if I've somehow missed replying to yours. But I would like to take a moment to answer a couple of common questions here:**

**1) Yes, Edward is in this fic! His role will become clearer in upcoming chapters. There is still a whole lot of story left to tell and he definitely plays a very major part in it. That is all I will say for now!**

**2) And yes, there will be additional violence in this story. However, I aim to keep away from resorting to pure gore and I wanted to make it very clear that I will not be including any graphic descriptions of sexual assault.**

**Sorry for the lengthy A/N!**


	8. NonFiction

**Sorry for the prolonged absence… **

**I own nothing, I just like to play!**

**This story is rated M for mature content. Please refrain from reading if you find violence or sexual themes objectionable or if you are underage.

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Chapter 7 – Non-Fiction

Non-Fiction:

1. The branch of literature comprising works of narrative prose dealing with or offering opinions or conjectures upon facts and reality, including biography, history, and the essay.

2. All writing or books not fiction, poetry, or drama, including non-fictive narrative prose and reference works.

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I careened carelessly along, trying to get very far away from the area as quickly as possible. I knew that just about every cop in the region was clustered behind me on that section of road beside the river, so I wasn't too concerned about the possibility of being pulled over for speeding. I just needed to get the hell out of there.

As I turned out onto the highway towards Snoqualmie, I realized that I had no idea where I was headed. I needed to go back to the cabin at some point to at least pick up my cat, my laptop and some clothing and other necessities. I knew there was no chance I would be able to feel safe spending another night all alone out there until Katrina Denali's killer was identified and apprehended. But I didn't yet have the immediate bravery required to face up to the task of even a quick stop out there.

So I drove about aimlessly, watching the strips of paint on the asphalt fuzzing hypnotically as they slid along and disappeared beside me. The forest streamed past – now seeming more ominous, ubiquitous and untamed than ever. One thought ran on a continuous loop through my mind, searing itself into my consciousness. Whoever had committed this hideous act was out there. He was out there, somewhere.

Other than that one distinct idea, my brain was jumbled into disorganized chaos. Any other thoughts just swirled and flickered through my head – tangled, fragmented and racing. The impossible had somehow happened and I had absolutely no framework in which I could even begin to try to make sense of my experiences that morning.

I stopped in town when I got to North Bend, pulling into a relatively busy grocery store parking lot. I didn't know where else I should go or what else I should do. Weekend shoppers scurried to and fro, pushing their gleaming metal carts back and forth across the pavement. I was comforted by the constant flow of people performing such an everyday and mundane task. It was soothing to know that at least for them, this was just an ordinary morning of running routine errands with their families. I parked my truck in a space at the lot's periphery and turned it off. As I paused there, I leaned back into the bench seat and I tried to slow my mind, tried to focus my thoughts on the circumstances that had resulted in me sitting there in my cold, wet jeans with absolutely no idea how to proceed. I was frightened, confused and completely unsure of what to do next.

Nothing made sense to me anymore.

I needed to take stock of what I knew for certain. I needed to do what I always did when I had energy to expel or a problem to solve. I needed to write. Angling the rear view mirror down to asses my appearance, I was startled by the vacant, haunted stare of the girl who looked back at me. I felt hollow. Detached. My skin was dull – even paler than usual and drawn tightly across my features. My hair was a stringy, wind-whipped disaster. My lips were lined with desiccated creases and stuck together where they met.

I was a complete mess.

Raking my fingertips through the knotted strands of my hair, I made a brief and futile effort to smooth it down. I gave up quickly and snapped it back into a ponytail with an elastic band I fished out of my purse. With a final glance at myself in the mirror, I ran a tube of balm over my lips and slid them over one another. Satisfied that I'd done what I could to make myself somewhat presentable, I popped the truck's door open and slid out onto the concrete.

I was in no condition to navigate the grocery store's weekend surge, so I walked next door to the neighboring gas station's convenience store. Inside, I located a small display of stationery supplies. I selected a basic notebook and a package of cheap ballpoint pens and paid for them along with an extra large cup of coffee.

When I was back inside the truck, I used my teeth to tear open the plastic sheath that encased the pens and slid one out. I began to sketch out a time line in between long, hungry gulps of coffee. Once I'd outlined the basic sequence of events, I started to scribble down the facts I was sure of in point form. Writing things down helped me to focus somewhat, but my list of certainties was still short and my thoughts were still wild. All I really knew was that I had somehow seen a vision of Katrina Denali's brutal murder in my mind two days before she actually disappeared. As far as I could tell from the appearance of her corpse as it had lain there in the river that morning, the vision had been entirely accurate. Her body had been covered in brutal puncture wounds, her throat had been slashed and her earring had been missing – torn right from her flesh. And I had found her in exactly the same place and position that I had seen in my head.

It was no longer at all possible to keep hoping that this was some bizarre coincidence. I still didn't know how or why, but I had to accept that I had somehow sensed these events before they occurred.

I recalled seeing the earring that had been looted from Katrina Denali's body being placed into a box containing several other pieces of jewellery. If that had also been an accurate peek into her killer's mind, he might very well be responsible for many more that this one gruesome death. But absolutely nothing I had ever seen had given me any indication of who he was or where he could be found. I had never seen his face or even heard his voice. I had no way of identifying him.

And then a new question hit me, sharp and quick, like a slap to the cheek.

Was more of my writing – or perhaps even all of my writing – based on visions that depicted reality rather than my imagination? How many real sets of eyes had I looked through thinking that I'd just been creating a character? I thought of my first novel and wondered if it could possibly have been an unintended work of non-fiction. Perhaps what I had published belonged in the true crime section rather than with the mysteries. Had there really been a dead girl out in the desert?

I had always thought that the things I saw in my head were of my own invention. I had assumed that they were my own creative inspirations that I used as fuel for my fiction. But what if every single one of these little flashes had been something else? Something stranger. Something unexplainable. What if I had always been able to see the future?

Or even stranger yet, what if I could cause the future with my thoughts or the stroke of my pen?

I took a deep breath and watched as a woman exited the grocery store with two small children, the youngest riding in her cart and the other skipping alongside. I gripped my pen tightly and pressed its tip to the paper, scribbling an experimental paragraph.

_As the young mother crosses the parking lot filled with a stream of weekend shoppers, her eyes are inexplicably drawn to an antiquated red truck at the edge of the asphalt. Momentarily distracted, she loses control of her cart and watches in anguish as it accelerates away from her with both her groceries and her child aboard. But just before it careens into the busy traffic of the main street, a woman with very messy brown hair and wet jeans leaps from the red truck and halts the runaway cart, saving the child and generally being an all-round hero._

I smirked a little and waited, sliding my fingers onto the door handle. Just in case.

The woman weaved through the lot, seeming to struggle somewhat to manage the overloaded cart and the little one at her side. I watched intently as she moved across the pavement, coming closer and closer to my truck. When she was a few spaces away, she stopped behind a black SUV and secured her children inside before she began unloading her groceries. When she was finished, she returned her cart to a corral, climbed into her vehicle and pulled away.

She hadn't even looked at me.

I exhaled slowly, feeling foolish. Sucking down the last of my coffee, I tossed the empty cup onto the floor in front of the passenger's seat and started the truck's engine. This wasn't something I could solve with ink and paper. I was still frightened, but I needed to act. I needed to get my stuff out of that cabin in the woods and find another place to stay and I needed to do it as soon as possible.

I headed straight out of town and turned back along the interstate towards the cabin. As I drove, I compiled a mental list of the things I would need to take with me. I figured I could be in and out of there in less than ten minutes. I would be quick and cautious. In and out.

When the cabin finally came into view amongst the trees, I could see nothing obviously amiss. I parked the truck in its usual spot on the gravel and made a short, but careful scan of my surroundings before I hopped out and headed up onto the porch. As I reached my hand out toward the doorknob, I turned my head to look back over my shoulder, once again sweeping my gaze over the small, grassy clearing that encircled me. The meadow was as tranquil and serene as ever and the branches of the surrounding trees swayed and danced lightly in the afternoon breeze. The rustle and shiver of their leaves was the only motion I could detect.

I closed and locked the door behind me as I entered. Hurrying across the living room, I began peeling my soiled and still damp clothes as I progressed, haphazardly dropping each garment onto the floor behind me in the least sexy strip show in history.

"Jakey," I sung out, wanting to rouse him from his usual afternoon nap. "Wake up, my little man. We're going on a trip."

Inside the bedroom, I dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and crammed several days' worth of extra clothing into an old duffel bag. I tossed in a few toiletries from the bathroom before zipping the bag closed and dropping it out in the living room. It wasn't until I turned into my office to grab my laptop that I realized something was very, very wrong. I felt my body stiffen as I sucked in a quick and audible gasp of air.

Someone had been inside.

The office was in complete shambles. The drawers on the desk gaped open and loose sheets of paper littered its surface and spilled over onto the floor. Entire shelves of books had been swept out of position to pile up, tiling onto one another like dominoes. The filing cabinet had been forced open and several of its manila folders were splayed open all around it.

Someone had been searching for something.

I surveyed the wreckage, trying to figure out exactly what might be missing. My laptop was the first thing that I could see was gone. I remembered leaving it on top of the desk before I'd left the cabin that morning. The notebook I had been using for the planning stages of my book had disappeared from there as well. And gone from the filing cabinet were all of the folders that had contained my archive of handwritten notes for my first novel.

Looking into the open bottom drawer of my desk, I pulled out an old metal tin that had once contained an assortment of Christmas cookies. I popped the lid to check the contents. Several swirls of neatly rolled bills were still coiled up inside, their edges fanning out against the shiny interior. My emergency stash.

Whoever had been inside the cabin hadn't been interested in money.

As the initial shock of the situation started to wane, fear began to seep in. I needed to leave. I pulled the cash from the tin and stuffed it into my pockets as I backtracked out to the living room to grab my things and run.

"Jake?!" I cried out in a squeal as my eyes swept the room for him. "Jake, where are you? We have to go now!"

I stopped suddenly, fixed into position by the overwhelming silence of the place.

"Jake?"

It came out in a whimper. I reached behind me instinctively for my gun and felt a stab of panic drive into me as my fingertips felt only the roughness of denim and the softness of my skin. And then I remembered – the gun was still stashed in the truck, hidden away in the glove compartment with my registration and an extra pair of mittens.

This newly realized vulnerability spurred me back into action. I needed to get myself out of there before the person who had done this decided to return. I called out to Jake again and began rushing from room to room, trying desperately to find him. I checked under the bed and inside the closets, but there was no trace of him anywhere. When I got to the storage cupboard in the hallway where I usually kept his plastic carrier I flung the door open and found that that too was missing.

My stomach knotted violently, crystallizing to stone, and tears began to prick at my eyes. My Jake had been taken. And he was so harmless and trusting of strangers that he'd probably gone without a struggle.

I ran back to the living room and snatched up my duffel bag on the way out the front door. I sprinted to the truck and hurled the bag and myself into the cab. I locked myself back into the safety of my old truck and as I started the engine and shifted into reverse, I realized that I knew where I should go. I would go to Forks – back to my father and my childhood home. Charlie would know what I should do.

As I began to back down the strip of gravel that cut through the trees, the tears spilled forth, blurring my view of the cabin from watercolor to abstract. I eased my foot from the accelerator and squeezed my eyes closed to force them to empty. As I wiped at them with the back of my wrist, a solitary and terrifying image suddenly infiltrated my mind.

Of all the hideous things that I had already seen, this was the vision that frightened me the most. The only thing I could make out was a face, dim and shadowed, shrouded in grainy blackness. The eyes and mouth were frozen wide open. Dark irises were rimmed in grayed white and the lips were formed into a perfect, horrified circle.

I knew that face better than any other in the world.

The face I saw was my own.

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**I apologize profusely for my unannounced hiatus. Life's been extremely overwhelming of late and I've had very little free time to sit down and write. There was an extended health emergency in my family and I've been in and out of town more than half a dozen times for work since my last update. The next chapter will come sooner this time… I promise! This story is so important to me and I will absolutely finish it as I am able to.  
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**I would like to say a very belated thank-you to tby789, author of The Office, for mentioning this story on the Twigasm podcast a long while back. I have heard about this from a few people, but I haven't had time to check out the episode for myself yet… **

**And as always, many thanks to every one of you who is reading and especially to those of you who take the time to leave a review. I am still blown away by all the interest and support that has been shown for this story and I wish I could hug all of you! I am really, really behind in responding to reviews right now, so I am just going to wipe my slate clean and start replying again from here on out – so if you have a question, comment, suggestion, etc. I would love to hear it!**


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